Looking for advice on helmet making

[Erock732]

Hey Everyone,

I'm new here and my research has led me to 405th basically I'm looking for advice on what would be the easiest way to make some helmets. I want to make custom helmets for my grooms men and I want them to look relatively nice for shoots and just looking awesome. Any help would be appreciated and if there is a way to make a kind of mastermold I could pop these out easier it would help tremendously. Thanks for the help from a noob to molding and crafting.

 

[Lieutenant Jaku]

Once you make one helmet you can make a mold of it and cast it. There are lots of tutorials online for that, as for easiest way, I don't really know

 

[Hein B287]

There really is no easy way as far as i can tell. From what i've read around here three ways are the most used.

Pepping: making your own helmet. But this takes a lot of time and you need to have the size just right for everyone when casting more helmets. And the helmet needs to be very strong when making the mold. You don't want it to deform.

Foam smithing: almost same as pepping but then you would need to mass produce them because i don't think a foam helmet can be used for mold making

3d printing: by far not the easiest way but could be what you need. Again sizing is the biggest issue. Too small or too big could pose a problem. You don't want to print expensive helmets you can't use. As for the finishing touch the print layers need to be cleaned up. So lots of filling and sanding required. But a single finished helmet could be usefull for a mold.

All up to you . Wouldn't make it to expensive though as i think most helmets probably won't be used later on ( i think?)

 

[Lieutenant Jaku]

Actually Hein B107 has good advice but I think that no matter what way you make it, the easiest thing to do is making a simple helmet

 

[Erock732]

Cool thanks guys! Much appreciated.

 

[TurboCharizard]

For popping out a bunch of identical helmets that have unique paintjobs, making a mould and casting is definitely your best option in terms of time investment.

The basic procedure that you'd be following is to make your master copy out of some rigid material (3D print for example) and then use a brush on silicone to make a mould skin. From there you'll make a mother mould jacket to help keep the helmet shape once the master is removed. To make copies you'll be rotocasting a resin in the mould and if everything goes well you could get a couple of pulls in an afternoon.

If you're not looking forward to picking up several hundred of dollars of casting materials I'd say do some foam builds which can be cranked out in the course of a day and gives more option for personalization.

 

[Erock732]

Thanks turbocharizard, I think I'm going to go the EVA foam route for now then maybe work on a mold for myself when I can put more time into it. I really appreciated the advice I'll post picks once they are all done.